Good morning. The nearly nonstop series of new U.S. sanctions being levied in a bid to halt Russia’s war machine have complicated events for companies facing their own external threat: ransomware attacks, Risk & Compliance Journal's Richard Vanderford reports. 

The ever-lengthening lists of sanctioned entities pose risks to U.S. companies that want to pay to get their systems back online after an attack, experts said.

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Ed McNicholas, co-leader of the cybersecurity practice at law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, said ensuring that ransomware payments aren’t going to sanctioned Russian entities has become “much harder” recently. “The overlap of the rise of ransomware and then these pervasive sanctions against Russia has created quite a firestorm in terms of the ability to pay ransoms,” he said.

Traditionally, the list of entities under sanction has been mostly relevant to those in financial services, but recent surges in ransomware attacks have meant that cybersecurity experts have had to do their best to ensure ransom payments aren’t going to blacklisted entities. Read more. 

Join us at the WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum on May 10 to discuss how risk and compliance professionals should approach their expanding responsibilities. Speakers include: Barbara Cosgrove, chief privacy officer at Workday; risk expert James Lam; sustainability specialist Mardi McBrien; Cynthia Patton, general counsel of Verily Life Sciences; and Maureen Mohlenkamp, chief ethics and compliance officer at DXC Technology. Register for a free ticket using the code wsj100 via this link.

IQ-EQ has appointed Sally Alayarian as its new group chief risk officer, the investor services provider said.

IQ-EQ, which employs about 4,000 people globally, said on Wednesday that Ms. Alayarian will be based in the Netherlands and oversee the group's current risk management and compliance frameworks.

Ms. Alayarian most recently worked as a director for enterprise risk management at TMF Group, a provider of compliance and administrative services.

—Richard Vanderford

The U.S. Justice Department has made sanctions evasion and export-control violations a central focus of its white-collar enforcement program following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials said on Wednesday.

The focus should have a profound effect on businesses and their efforts to comply with U.S. laws, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at a New York City Bar Association event.

Archegos Capital Management LP managed to persuade Wall Street to lend it billions of dollars on little more than its word.

The unsealed federal indictment of Archegos’s founder sheds new light on banks’ failure to ensure that the family office wasn’t taking undue risk with the money they were lending it—as well as on their permissive attitude toward wealthy, fee-generating clients.

Prosecutors say Bill Hwang and his employees routinely misled eight banks that traded with the firm or lent it money to invest—a group that included Wall Street heavyweights Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG. The Archegos executives, prosecutors allege, lied about the size of the firm’s positions, the makeup of its portfolio and the amount of cash it had, convincing the banks until the very end they were safe.

• Who Is Archegos Fund Manager Bill Hwang?

China’s SZ DJI Technology Co., the world’s largest maker of consumer drones, said it is suspending business activities in Ukraine and Russia pending a compliance review.

Meanwhile, French energy giant TotalEnergies SE said on Wednesday it has taken a $4.1 billion accounting charge on the value of its natural-gas reserves, citing impacts from the Western sanctions targeting Russia.

French auto maker Renault SA is in talks with the Russian government about handing over its 68% stake in Russia’s biggest auto maker to a state-backed entity, according to a report in Russian state media.

• A Securities and Exchange Commission proposal intended to make Treasury markets more resilient has sparked a backlash from cryptocurrency companies, which say it could increase legal risks for so-called decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms.
   
• The Biden administration criticized China’s protection of U.S. intellectual property, saying that Beijing still must make a “full range of fundamental changes” to improve protection of U.S. patents, copyrights and trade secrets.
   
• Boeing Co.’s problems deepened as its jet programs suffered fresh setbacks early this year and the company faced challenges from supply-chain constraints and sanctions targeting Russia over its war on Ukraine.
   
• Amgen Inc. has been hit with a bill for more than $7 billion in unpaid taxes and penalties from the Internal Revenue Service, the company said on Wednesday, the latest salvo in the company’s dispute over back taxes related to its operations in Puerto Rico.
   
• Federal judges and Supreme Court justices must make more timely and accessible disclosures of their financial holdings and potential conflicts of interest under legislation that’s one step closer to becoming law after a voice vote in the House Wednesday.
   
• Barclays PLC raised the estimated loss from a debt-sale flub and delayed a share buyback until it sorted out the mess with regulators, a mistake that drove down its net profit last quarter.
   

Russia on Wednesday released inconsistent data that showed the economy in March was either doing fine or just treading water. Private-sector data has shown a sharp slowdown in Russia.

Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine rages, an energy battle is spreading across Europe, with countries racing to replace Russian fossil fuels while Moscow cuts off gas supplies to some nations and threatens others with the same.

• Russian Supply Concerns Drive Natural-Gas Prices Higher
• Grain Traders’ Profits Rise as Ukraine War Tightens Global Food Supply

• Deutsche Bank AG said its first-quarter profit jumped on strong client activity, despite an uncertain business environment related to the war in Ukraine and surging inflation.
   
• Brazil's central bank for years has been working to bring high borrowing costs down by, among other things, spurring competition in the country’s clubby banking industry with reduced barriers for financial technology firms to lend and provide other services.

• At least six hacking groups linked to the Russian government have attempted hundreds of cyberattacks in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February, including dozens intended to destroy computer systems, according to new research from Microsoft Corp.
   
• Recent high-profile heists targeting cryptocurrency projects haven’t scared away venture capitalists and other investors. In fact, some backers are doubling down, investing more in hack victims.

• Credit Suisse Group AG will replace several top executives, including its chief financial officer, and said the tough business conditions that caused a loss last quarter will persist in the months ahead.
   
• Mattel Inc. has held talks with private-equity firms about a potential sale, people familiar with the matter said, just a few months after the famed toy company declared its corporate turnaround complete.
   
• London Metal Exchange Chief Executive Matthew Chamberlain will remain in his position, a surprise reversal after he announced exit plans earlier this year.

Some of the nation’s largest pharmacies have blocked or delayed prescriptions over the last year from clinicians working for telehealth startups that have sprung up to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to pharmacies and people familiar with the issue.

The pharmacies in certain cases have expressed concerns that clinicians at Done Health and Cerebral Inc. are writing too many prescriptions for Adderall and other stimulants, the people said. The federal government considers the drugs controlled substances because of their potential for abuse and places them in the same category as cocaine.

After Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed lawmakers to pass a bill to eliminate Walt Disney Co.’s special tax benefits in Florida, the company, which boasts one of the largest and most influential lobbying teams in the state, crafted a new strategy: Keep its mouth shut.

Disney had been burned too many times over the past two months tangling with Mr. DeSantis, the company’s allies in the state legislature said, and keeping quiet would give the company the best shot at working out a resolution with the governor, according to people familiar with the situation.